


The Miracle Ship

by queerchickadee, Stregatrek



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Crack, F/M, Gen, Other, RIP to Seven of Nine but this timeline is different, WHY did they not just warp 10 home once they'd figured out how to reverse the whole lizard thing????, Well - Freeform, absolute madness, episode coda: Threshold, in this fic they do, look - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25625434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerchickadee/pseuds/queerchickadee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stregatrek/pseuds/Stregatrek
Summary: What if they just went home using warp ten technology??
Relationships: uh... they were lizards
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	The Miracle Ship

**Author's Note:**

> did my wife and I drink too much coffee too late at night and co-write this in one go?? absolutely

“We’re being hailed,”

“Onscreen,”

A man in a blue uniform turns around, as though _he_ hadn’t called _them_. “Hello- ah- I can explain,”

“Is-” The lieutenant checks their panel again. “Are you calling from _Voyager_?”

“That’s-” the man pauses to press a hypo into the neck of something Thind can be only moderately sure is a person. “What I can explain. You see, I am the Emergency Medical Hologram for _Voyager_ , and-”

“Why is an EMH using the comm system?” The commander breaks in.

The EMH rolls its eyes. “That’s rather a longer story than I’d like to tell you. I need use of your medical facilities. Or personnel. Immediately.”

Janeway comes to on the bridge, someone she doesn’t recognize bending over her, medical scanner in her face. “It’s a miracle you’re alive,”

She groans. “What happened?”

“Uh- well,”

“EMH to Janeway,”

“Janeway here,”

“Captain. I’ve just de-evolved the last of the crew. But, Captain, it appears that… the… side-effects…”

Janeway looks around. “You wouldn’t happen to be talking about the, ah, children, would you Doctor?”

“I would, as it so happens. I take it you have some on the bridge,”

“We do at that,” Janeway says as Chakotay groans, sitting up and rubbing his brow. “Good morning, Commander,”

The Doctor continues talking. “We have several sets on the lower decks, as well. What do you recommend we do with them?”

Chakotay looks chagrined. No convenient planets, this time. “Build giant terrariums?” The Commander says.

“Uh, whose do you think these are?” Tom is gesturing to the tiny salamander-like things crawling in Janeway’s general vicinity.

She looks between the two men closest to her- Tom and Chakotay. At the risk of establishing a pattern, she dodges the feelings which have suddenly become twice as complicated as they already were, with Earth hanging on the viewscreen and Mark somewhere on its surface. “Well, Tom, I’d say we’re parents… again. Congratulations?”

Her navigator flushes pink and opens his mouth, then closes it without saying anything.

Harry Kim, alone behind his station, sighs. “Tom two, Harry zero,”

Narrowing her eyes, Janeway calls, “Come again, ensign?”

Tom chokes on his tongue- mercifully, they all have tongues. Janeway is grateful she doesn’t recall that part of the evolution. Harry clears his throat too loudly. “Nothing, Captain, sorry,”

Tuvok is on his feet, checking his panel. “We have been in orbit around Earth for approximately one hour, Captain,”

Janeway looks up at the lieutenant-grade medical visitor hovering over her. “Thanks for your help. Seems like we’ve sped up the process a little from the last time.” She gets to her feet.

“The _last time_?” Lieutenant Starfleet Medical sounds horrified.

“It was just us, last time, too,” Tom gestures between himself and Janeway. “I guess the Doctor wasn’t kidding when he said he’d figured it out.”

She quirks her brow in acknowledgement. “Evidently not. Mr. Paris, get me Starfleet Command. I’d rather like docking clearance,”

“Uh- can someone else give you docking clearance this time, Captain?” He rubs the back of his neck, and she almost laughs.

“You heard him, Mr. Kim, get me Starfleet,”

“Channel open.”

It's a quick conversation, though Command is understandably surprised. They promise to send up an Admiral as quickly as possible and end the conversation with a warm if harried "Welcome home. Please proceed to the docking ring."

The feed cuts. Janeway opens the comm link to the Doctor. “Everyone turned into some form of lizard?”

“Essentially correct, Captain, though some were semi-aquatic. Mr. Neelix in fact resembled some form of axolotl.”

“Hm.” Janeway exchanges looks with Tom Paris. “It seems lizards are the highest form of life.”

He laughs uncomfortably. “Well, they- we- they?- do have a knack for passing on their… uh, never mind.” How studiously he examines the navigation panel makes Janeway smirk, hands on her hips. She steps forward and pats his shoulder, aware that the bridge crew is watching them.

“Never mind, Mr. Paris, is possibly the best thing you’ve said all voyage. Now. Take us in,”

He clears his throat. “Aye aye, Captain,”

Janeway calls a meeting in the mess hall, needing to compile data before the Admiral arrives. It's best if they get their stories straight together. To her surprise, her chief engineer shows up with Ensign Vorik in tow, the Ensign holding two not-quite-salamanders in his arms.

“I can’t believe I was a gila monster. Thing.” B’elanna’s nose is wrinkled. “How am I supposed to explain my not-Klingon-but-still-hybrid children to my mother?”

Ensign Vorik goes distinctly green. “Your mother?”

B’elanna nods. “I mean, I don’t know how to raise children. Or lizards. I can barely keep plants alive. Who else am I gonna ask?”

“We could ask my parents,”

She gives him an incredulous look. “You’re gonna admit wild lizard times to your family? Won’t they, I don’t know, kick you off the planet, or something?”

The Ensign looks like he’s only ever experienced one emotion, and it’s blinding embarrassment. “They will not. However, we may wish to take their advice with a modicum of caution in applying their advice, as they are related to Ambassador Sarek,”

B’elanna nods. “Ah. Yeah, I want my lizard children to not keep their lizard siblings weird open secrets.”

“Agreed,” Vorik says. “I believe we should formalize our union in order to make shared custody-”

“Are you _out of your Vulcan mind_?” B’elanna’s voice rises sharply, and Janeway clears her throat.

“If we could get back on topic.”

Neelix looks around at them all. “I- ah, well, that is- I’ve always wanted a family. If anyone has lizards they don’t- er, don’t exactly have space for, I-I could take them,”

Janeway regards him speculatively. “Uncle Neelix, huh? I suppose it only makes sense… keep the Voyager family together. Sort of? God, I need coffee.” _Dogs are so much easier,_ she thinks. Oh god, she hopes Mollie doesn't chase or eat one of the children.

“Anything we need to know about the genetic differences?” She asks, turning to the Doctor. It only makes sense, with the array of species standing in a circle. Lizards may be the highest form of life, but that doesn’t make them all the same.

The EMH shakes his head. “Nothing of consequence. You all had- slightly different paths through evolution, but at the end; the strangest thing was my having to remove Kes from the ceiling. She made quite a nimble gecko. Gecko-like thing.” The Doctor quirks his brow, and Janeway puts her face in her hand, rubbing her temple.

“Someone get me coffee, please, before I have to explain this to the Admiralty,”

“Explain what to the Admiralty?” She hears an icy voice behind her and whips around, coming to attention.

“Uh, Admiral,” she salutes. “I’m preparing the material for a briefing with my staff presently. We- ah- had a bit of a bumpy ride home.”

The Admiral’s eyes go around their loose circle. “I’ll just bet you did, Captain. Briefing at eighteen hundred. Please keep your crew aboard ship until instructed otherwise.”

Janeway salutes. “Yes ma’am,”

The Admiral leaves.

“I was thinking,” Neelix begins. “I know we’re all going to miss something about Voyager’s last couple of years- what, what if we open a suggestion box, and everyone can submit their, ah, their favorite moments aboard-ship, or something they’ll miss, and those will be the names of the children!”

Janeway puts her face back in her hand, thinking about one of her children being called Leola Root Stew. “Hey, if there were twins, we could call them ‘Kazon’ and ‘Nistrim,’” Tom says, not humorously enough.

“No,” is chorused around the circle. Chakotay is looking at the ceiling like it’s going to tell him what to do with half a ship full of alien lizard babies he can’t just abandon on some planet in the Delta quadrant.

The rest of their ‘meeting’ goes quickly. Janeway slams three cups of coffee and marches off, squaring her shoulders to speed-write a report she hopes isn’t used in too many future scientific articles. Oh, god, there are going to be engineering AND anthropological studies of this.

It’s fine, when it’s done, and Janeway steels herself before she beams down with a salute to Chakotay that says absolutely nothing except somehow everything from ‘I love you’ to ‘oops’ to ‘wish me luck’ to ‘if the Admiralty kills me for this I’m leaving you everything.’

“So,” the Admiral is pinching the bridge of her nose, an hour later. “You broke the warp barrier. You all turned into lizards, except your EMH, who is in fact a hologram and not subject to the… genetic acceleration. He turned you all back from lizards. Long and short of it is, _Voyager_ is home, the warp barrier should be left to its own devices, and the Human race is on a steady progression toward being a race of giant salamanders who tend to- ah- mate indiscriminately. Did I leave anything out?”

Janeway isn’t sure what her face is doing when she says, “No, sir,” but it’s either a smile or the verge of tears. Why _do_ these things happen to her? _Picard _never got turned into a giant lizard twice in as many days. Although there was that one time with the T-Cells where he was almost a lemur. But almost a lemur does not a giant salamander make. She pulls her attention back to the briefing.__

__“In going through your logs, Captain, I’m sure we will discover more material and hold further briefings. For now, I suspect your crew may want to see their families. And a counselor.”_ _

__Janeway nods. “Yes please to both, Admiral.” She’s not sure how she’s going to explain to Mark that she’s had evolutionarily-enhanced offspring with Tom Paris twice, and that half of those children are in the Delta Quadrant, but… therapy would be nice._ _


End file.
